Academic highlight: The media and the Court

Posted Fri, October 19th, 2012 2:20 pm by Amanda Frost

The media provides essential information about the Supreme Court to the general public, translating complex decisions into language that the lay person can understand. Informed and responsible press coverage also benefits the Court. However, there are things that the Court could do to make it easier for the press to do their job. The Brigham Young University Law Review recently hosted a symposium, entitled “The Press, the Public, and the U.S. Supreme Court,” and invited law professors, political scientists, and journalists to discuss the interaction between the media and the Justices. The symposium included panels on the costs and benefits of cameras in the Court and the Court’s treatment of social media. In a keynote address, available here, Erwin Chemerinsky proposed some “modest” reforms that could improve the Court’s communication with the press and public, such as spreading out the release of major decisions over a week or longer, rather than releasing them on one or two days at the end of the Term. He also suggested that the Court shorten its opinions, speak more clearly, and acknowledge the value choices that underlie the doctrine. Another highlight was a panel featuring Supreme Court journalists, including SCOTUSblog’s own Lyle Denniston, Adam Liptak (The New York Times), Dahlia Lithwick (Slate), and Tony Mauro (National Law Journal), who described the challenges of reporting on the Court’s activities – particularly in late June!

On Friday the justices will meet for their March 23 conference; our "petitions to watch" for that conference will be available soon.

Major Cases

Trump v. Hawaii(1) Whether the respondents’ challenge to the president’s suspension of entry of aliens abroad is justiciable; (2) whether the proclamation – which suspends entry, subject to exceptions and case-by-case waivers, of certain categories of aliens abroad from eight countries that do not share adequate information with the United States or that present other risk factors – is a lawful exercise of the president’s authority to suspend entry of aliens abroad; (3) whether the global injunction barring enforcement of the proclamation’s entry suspensions worldwide, except as to nationals of two countries and as to persons without a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States, is impermissibly overbroad; and (4) whether the proclamation violates the establishment clause of the Constitution.

Gill v. Whitford(1) Whether the district court violated Vieth v. Jubelirer when it held that it had the authority to entertain a statewide challenge to Wisconsin's redistricting plan, instead of requiring a district-by-district analysis; (2) whether the district court violated Vieth when it held that Wisconsin's redistricting plan was an impermissible partisan gerrymander, even though it was undisputed that the plan complies with traditional redistricting principles; (3) whether the district court violated Vieth by adopting a watered-down version of the partisan-gerrymandering test employed by the plurality in Davis v. Bandemer; (4) whether the defendants are entitled, at a minimum, to present additional evidence showing that they would have prevailed under the district court's test, which the court announced only after the record had closed; and (5) whether partisan-gerrymandering claims are justiciable.

Carpenter v. United StatesWhether the warrantless seizure and search of historical cellphone records revealing the location and movements of a cellphone user over the course of 127 days is permitted by the Fourth Amendment.

Conference of March 16, 2018

Blatt, Hasenmiller, Leibsker & Moore, LLC v. Oliva (1) Whether good faith reliance on controlling circuit precedent, prior to any retroactive change in that law, is an unintentional “bona fide error” and a procedure “reasonably adapted to avoid error” within the meaning of the “bona fide error” defense in the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1692k(c); and (2) whether the due process clause prohibits punishment for conduct that was lawful when committed, but later prohibited by a retroactive change of law.

All Nippon Airways v. Wortman (1) Whether the filed-rate doctrine—which the Supreme Court firmly established in Keogh v. Chicago & Northwest Railway Co. and reaffirmed in Square D Co. v. Niagara Frontier Tariff Bureau, Inc.—still applies where rates are filed with a federal agency pursuant to a statutory regulatory scheme (as held by the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 1st, 2nd, and 7th Circuits), or whether it no longer applies to such rates if a court finds the agency lacks sufficient “practical ability” to regulate those rates (as held by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit below); and (2) whether, and to what extent, the filed-rate doctrine applies where a federal agency retains regulatory authority over rates, but chooses to exercise that authority by establishing a regulatory system, which it periodically revisits and revises, that does not require each rate to be literally filed with the agency.

Gonzalez-Badillo v. United States Whether, upon obtaining general consent to search a bag or other area, law enforcement may, consistent with the Fourth Amendment, “pry open” or otherwise cause intentional damages to personal property found within that might reasonably hold the object of the search.

Pioneer Centres Holding Company Stock Ownership Plan and Its Trustees v. Alerus Financial, N.A. Whether a plaintiff bears the full burden of establishing loss causation under 29 U.S.C. § 1109(a), which allows an employee plan to recover for “any losses to the plan resulting from [a fiduciary's] breach of its duties” under ERISA, as the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 6th, 9th, 10th, and 11th Circuits have held, or whether the burden shifts to the fiduciary to establish the absence of loss causation once the beneficiary makes a prima facie case by establishing breach of fiduciary duty and associated loss, as the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 8th Circuits have held.

Starr International Company, Inc. v. United States Whether a private party with Article III standing may be barred from asserting constitutional claims for money damages against the federal government because of the equitable doctrine of “third-party prudential standing.”